Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ratched’ On Netflix, Starring Sarah Paulson In Ryan Murphy’s Origin Story Of ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’s Sadistic Nurse

You know the character of Nurse Ratched; Ken Kesey created her in his novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Louise Fletcher won an Oscar for playing the role in the 1975 film version of Kesey’s novel. Ryan Murphy decided it was high time that we find out about what made Mildred Ratched into such a cold, calculating, evil nurse. Ratched is the result.

RATCHED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A church service in a massive cathedral. A graphic says “1947”.

The Gist: After the service, the church’s priests, including the monsignor, go to see Miracle on 34th Street. One stays behind to masturbate (he says he has a cold). In the middle of his self-love he hears a knock on the door. He lets in a young man looking for a phone. The man, Edmund Tolleson (Finn Wittrock), isn’t there to call a tow truck, though. When the other four priests come back from the movies, they find their colleague dead. Tolleson goes after the rest, stabbing them repeatedly. He’s especially interested in torturing the monsignor, whom he claims got his mother pregnant, then forcing her to place him in an orphanage. “You haven’t suffered nearly enough,” when the monsignor tells Tolleson that he’s suffered for his sins.

Six months later, Mildred Ratched (Sarah Paulson) arrives at the small Northern California town of Lucia, just as its state hospital is preparing to admit Tolleson, aka “The Clergy Killer”, as a patient. She’s a rather determined woman, one who castigates a gas attendant for his horniness at looking at two people making out, for instance. When she parks at her seaside motel, she sees a mysterious man next door; his name is Charles Wainwright (Corey Stoll), but Mildred isn’t sure why he seems interested in her.

She goes to the state hospital bearing a letter from its administrator, Dr. Richard Hanover (Jon Jon Briones), inviting her for an interview for a night-shift nursing job. She gets admonished by the officious head nurse, Betsy Bucket (Judy Davis) that Dr. Hanover is out and would never send that type of letter. Mildred talks her way into staying and waiting, though, saying she “has nowhere else to go.” While she wanders the halls looking for a restroom, she hears banging and sees one of the nurses having sex with an orderly.

Dr. Hanover is in Sacramento, trying to get funding for the hospital from Governor George Milburn (Vincent D’Onofrio), who keeps blowing him off. When the doctor encounters the governor and his assistant Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon) at a local restaurant, he makes his case; the governor blows him off again, but Briggs is intrigued.

When Dr. Hanover returns, he tries to throw Mildred out, but Mildred talks her way into his office and impresses him, especially with her view that people with mental illnesses, even ones who have committed criminal acts, should be treated humanely. But when she’s told there isn’t any money to bring her on, she goes to plan B: Blackmail the nurse she saw having sex with an orderly.

Back at the motel, she invites Wainwright to her room, only to tell her a story of getting pregnant and being forced to give up her child.

She returns to the hospital, in uniform, the next day, the same day that the governor and Briggs are due to take a tour ahead of the “Clergy Killer”‘s revival. She aims to make an impression, giving one patient a drug he shouldn’t take in order to make a show of saving his life, and she also gets another to kill himself inside Dr. Hanover’s expansive office, citing the fact that he’ll never get to see his family again. When she’s seen as indispensable as she gets rid of the body, her employment there is ensured. Then we find out why Nurse Ratched was so determined to land a job there.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This almost feels like a Northern California adjunct to Murphy’s series Hollywood, which takes place roughly during the same period. And the same level of detail is applied to Ratched.

Our Take: Even though Ratched was co-created by Murphy and Evan Romansky, the show has Murphy’s fingerprints all over it (he directed the first episode). It’s lush, has attention to detail, deals in the outrageous, and seems to sacrifice character for style whenever possible.

Did we really need a back story for Ken Kesey’s sadistic nurse in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest? Ratched was always an archetype, not really a character. She was nasty, vindictive, sadistic, and did all of her evil with a scarily stonefaced facade.

Paulson has shown more than once, in Murphy’s shows and elsewhere, that she’s completely capable of playing all of those, while making Ratched seem like a human being. That’s why she’s a perfect fit for playing a “younger” Ratched (though Fletcher was younger than Paulson when she played a supposedly older version of Ratched… Hmmm…). There’s still a touch of humanity in Mildred Ratched at this stage, despite the fact that she spent the first episode destroying lives in order to wheedle her way into the job at Lucia State Hospital, and Paulson plays it beautifully.

But, just like with the recently-aired “reimagining” of Perry Mason, Paulson could be playing a sadistic nurse without the iconic name and the show would have been just as effective. This feels less like an origin story for Nurse Ratched and more like a branding exercise to get people to tune in. Considering we haven’t even seen Sharon Stone yet, you’d think the acting pedigrees of everyone involved would be enough to get people interested.

As far as the first episode is concerned, it was overly long, lingering too much on symbolic lighting, ominous long shots and scenic views than developing character or story, but that seems to be a Murphy trademark of late. His pilots used to have impact, grabbing the viewer and demanding that they watch more, but lately he seems content to spend time setting up a story and letting it grab you later. We’re not sure if that’s a great strategy. That being said, the performances of Paulson, Davis, Briones and Nixon will help keep viewers clicking “Next Episode”.

Sex and Skin: The scene where Mildred finds a nurse boning a patient is about the only real sex or skin the episode has.

Parting Shot: After hearing the sirens of the police transporting Tolleson to the hospital, she goes down to his converted wine cellar cell and tells him “I’m finally here,” and he tells her “I don’t want to die,” as both cry.

Sleeper Star: Judy Davis is always amazing, and she seems like she’ll be a good foil for Paulson as Nurse Bucket.

Most Pilot-y Line: The scene where Mildred explains her trauma as Wainwright just looks like he’s DTF feels like a bit of tortured exposition that could have been handled differently.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Based on Paulson’s performance, we’ll give Ratched a recommendation. But it feels like, yet again, Murphy has lost what it means to tell a good story that cuts through all the stylistic gymnastics.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Ratched On Netflix